Give These Clay Feet Wings
by MrsTater
Summary: The curse is broken, but the cursed still have to mend. [BatB 2017, Lumière x Plumette]


Down _._

A word meaning the softest of feathers, but also a direction. The latter meaning the one in use as Plumette's wings cease to fly.

She tries not fear as she falls into Lumière's arms. For all his amorous declarations that she makes him weak, he has ever been her strength. The curse is stronger, though, and his light is fading. She won't see it snuffed out entirely, if she turns inanimate first-one small mercy granted to her. His face, handsome even cast in bronze, will be her last sight before her eyes stop seeing.

If only it weren't etched in sorrow…Plumette would dust it away, shine him up if she could, but her wings are unmovable ivory. The handle of a cleaning tool, elegant, but useless. _Rubbish,_ like Cogsworth said.

Lumière holds her like something precious until she becomes an object to be set down, and forgotten.

* * *

Plumette doesn't remember lying in a bed of down, but she awakens in one. No, not awakens, for she wasn't asleep. She animates. _Re-_ animates.

She flaps her wings to fly, but she's too heavy to lift off the ground. In fact she lacks wings altogether because she has arms again. _Arms_ , with hands at the ends, and fingers.

Lumière has fingers and hands again, too. They are there, ready and waiting, wrapping around hers. His flesh warmer than flame and strong as ever, drawing her up with gentle ease as if she weighed no more than a feather.

 _I can't wait to kiss you_ , he told her so many times during the long years of the curse, and he doesn't. Plumette barely glimpses his blue eyes before they close, as hers do, at the meeting of their lips.

When Lumière leans into her with a sigh, weak in the knees, her heart takes wing.

* * *

It's a wonder to behold: Lumière, like the castle, restored to his former glory.

Even as a candelabrum, no one would accuse him of inertia; human again, he resumes the responsibilities of _maître d_ ' _hôtel_ with panache, leaping around with boundless energy.

"It's as if you're walking on air," Plumette observes.

Lumière's laugh floats to her through the halls, echoed by the other servants infected with his joy. "Compared to walking with metallic feet, _ma chérie,_ I am!"

He catches her by the waist, twirling her in an impromptu dance. Plumette tries to keep step, but stumbles, breathless.

Grin falling, Lumière looks her up and down. "What is the matter, my Plumette?"

Mustering a smile, she brings his back with a tickle of her featherduster on his cheek. "Only getting used to walking on solid ground again, _mon amour_."

He's off again-duty calls.

Plumette's feet may as well be made of metal.

* * *

She moves like one in a dream.

This _was_ her dream: to steal through the darkened castle, skirt whispering over carpets on her way to tryst with Lumière. It's reality now, yet Plumette feels as though she's sleepwalking. Day and night, she dreams of flying amongst the buttresses and awakens with moist cheeks and a dampened pillow.

She couldn't cry when her eyes were carved ivory, but she feels just as cold inside and hollowed-out.

 _Tea_. Shivering in her nightdress, she passes alcoves where she and her love exchanged heated kisses, goes down the narrow servants' staircase to the kitchens. Even when they were enchanted and neither ate nor drank, they sat around the table while Mrs. Potts poured out steaming cups. The ceremony of it helped, if only to feel a little more human.

Light shines around the edges of the cracked door, and Lumière's voice drifts out. "I am worried about my Plumette, Mrs. Potts. She is…not herself."

"The curse is broken, dear. People need time to mend."

* * *

After that, Plumette begins to notice the cracks in façades other than her own.

The castle is restored, but there's still work to do. Why should its cursed residents be any different?

"It breaks my heart to see you unhappy, _ma chérie_ ," Lumière says as she trails him through the halls, putting out the lights after the master and mistress retire for the night. "What can I do for you?"

He truly lives to serve, and Plumette's his mistress, in every sense, he likes to tease. He's not flirting now. She hears the fracture in his voice.

"I'm not unhappy," she answers. "It's only…Do you ever miss the way we were?"

Lumière stands still and silent in a circle of flickering candlelight. "Some nights I awaken in the dark. I cannot make light, and for a moment I am afraid."

Plumette knows it's not the dark he fears. It's being inanimate, the curse never undone. Gathering dust in the dark.

"Then you remember the candles?"

He snuffs them out, turns to her as plumes of smoke rise, his teeth a bright flash as he smiles. "I remember _you_. Light of my life."

Her heart flutters behind her ribcage.

"I miss my wings."

"Let me help you find them."

* * *

Lumière kisses her until she is too light-headed and weak-kneed to stand.

Plumette falls onto a bed of softest down, sets her fear down there, to be forgotten. How can she remember it when Lumière's arms are there to hold her? How can she feel cold or empty when she has him to warm and fill her?

He feathers her with kisses, moustache tickling as he murmurs flirtations: "You set my flesh on fire _._ I melt in your embrace."

Tongue and clever fingertips work enchantments over her body. Plumette has been burned by him before, but this fire licks at her more hotly than when he was made of it.

A dozen candles dance, and all around them is light. _She_ is light. Light as a feather, lighter than air...

"Have you found your wings?" Lumière's voice is a crackle of flame in her ear. "Do you remember how to fly?"

" _Oui, mon amour_."

Arms, hands, fingers fan out on the bed of down.

Plumette rises up.


End file.
